Life isn't fair, save the planet anyway.

09 July 2016 [link youtube]


a.k.a., "When the revolution comes, YOU AND YOUR C-MINUS BODY CAN G.T.F.O."


Youtube Automatic Transcription

life isn't fair and sometimes these
questions of who's good-looking who's fat and who's thin sometimes they are relevant to the job at hand to the task at hand to the questions that are being asked when they're irrelevant then yes it's offensive and cruel and catty to even mention them if you're applying for a job that has nothing to do with your physical appearance then nobody should make the comment that you've got a c- body nobody should make the comment you've got name Plus body either it's totally inappropriate its offensive its denigrating etc but guess what if you're in the theatre if you're an actor or an actress that's right these days we call everyone actor even if they're female forgot English language's changed a bit since I was a kid if you are an aspiring model of course your physical appearance matters of course we have to talk about this stuff and of course in case you haven't noticed a lot of my fellow political activists within veganism do have delusions of being beauty icons of being models whether that's Instagram models or runway models or otherwise exploiting their own sexuality their own bodies what-have-you some of my self fellow vegans succeed I mean there's no doubt with the guy like vegan cheetah obviously his sexuality and his body as part of his appeal but he didn't ride on that did he he does a lot more than just that he's a hardest-working man in show business that guy even if you hate what he does he does a five-hour podcast and within that podcast there will be substantive talk about vegan activism in politics there'll also be a lot of BS but look there's a weird parallel between this question and people accusing me of being guilty of an appeal to nature fallacy not every use of the concept of nature is fallacious I have talked about this on my channel relatively long time ago when it was first pointing out to people look if you are asking how do we design a zoo enclosure for penguins how do we design artificial man-made habitats for penguins than you do look at nature you look at how do the penguin live in nature you take that as a standard as a criterion as you produce a list of criteria for the temperature for the type of food they eat exercise that would get and then you try to make it enclosure that comes as close to that as possible or or you make hard decisions maybe you've got a really tough decision maybe you say look we only have so much money either we can save the lives of 20 penguins and give them a good quality of life in a good enclosure that resembles nature or we can save the lives of 100 penguins but they're gonna live in a concrete bunker that we you know with a refrigerator going it's it's not gonna be that good of quality of life then what do you want to do those are hard hard decisions that we get into the whole conservation approach presents us with a completely different set of moral conundrum then the games people have been playing lately about beauty diet weight loss etc okay in the same way naturally some of you guys are gonna get angry that I dared to make a single comment what somebody's physical appearance but I did not do so in a vacuum I did not come on here and make a vacuum saying someone was ugly or stupid and by the way plenty of people have made those videos about me before durianrider claimed that I was a wife-beater before he claimed that I was a sexual predator before he threatened to beat me up in person in Chiangmai before he said he had evidence to present to the police he was gonna bring me in and put me in jail he said all those things I look it up it's on this channel you don't have to look far before any of that he said I was fat and he said it was on steroids and it was not in any way relevant to the subjects being debated now if I were selling you a weight-loss book I think you could talk about whether or not I'm fat if I were selling you a book on how to gain muscle mass I think you could talk about whether or not a monster I think those could be in other circumstances those could be meaningful and relevant questions but we weren't we were talking about things like whether or not it is ethical for a leader in the vegan community to falsely claim to have a disease that he does not have or to falsely claim that he has cured a disease that he does not have and I have made videos on this channel you can go back and look at them asking the question of did durianrider claimed he had Crohn's disease sometimes he did claim this sometimes he did not you can try your own conclusions in those videos and did he cure what is currently an incurable disease when I say it is incurable I mean that the greatest scientific minds say that at this time there is no known cure a hundred years in the future there could be whatever but at this time Crohn's disease has no known cure so for someone to come on the internet sell you a diet book and claim that he miraculously healed that condition and let's be honest durianrider has a long list of mystery diagnosis of illnesses and psychological conditions that he claims he's cured through his diet and lifestyle choices that he wants to sell you as a package deal my critique of those issues it is actually not relevant it's not meaningful to point out that I'm fat to say that I don't deserve to have an opinion on something like vivisection on various questions of animal rights ecology at a very controversial video here talking about how much water we actually save as vegans if you're eating fruit as opposed to eating pork the statistics are actually not that strongly in favor of veganism it looks pretty grim it's quite possible on a fruitarian diet could be having a much worse eka logical impact than someone here in China who eats mostly grains mostly rice with little bits and pieces of pork thrown in which is what they eat a lot of people here in China you know it's they're not they're not vegetarian they're not vegan but there's just not that much quantity of meat in their diet when you do the math who is actually having more of an impact on water use water use being one of the main themes raised by cowspiracy and other popular documentaries in veganism it turns out that vegans we don't have the huge exponential of exponential advantage that we pretend we do so to me those are questions worth asking you can disagree with me you can watch the video you can say interesting points um you can shrug your shoulders I mean again that video I present the charts but no to say I'm fat or I'm ugly ugly is irrelevant but guess what if you want to be an actor here's what you have to know and I know this because I have this much experience in the theater okay if you want to be an actor it doesn't mean you want to act it means you want to go to auditions it means you want to wake up in the morning memorize the script stand in a room in front of a bunch of strangers who are bored and you've already seen fifty other people reading exactly the same script and you want to present yourself to them heart and soul say am i good enough am I pretty enough am i right for this part and you're gonna hear No again and again and again that's what it is to be an actor okay being an actor isn't about acting it's about auditioning it's about having the strength of character adaptability vivacity whatever you want to say to go through that addition process a hundred times or a thousand times and even if they tell you that you don't get the part because you've got a c- body that you get up the next morning and you go to an audition again okay I have actually no delusions about my own looks or appearance I remember a casting agent once came up to me and was interested in putting me into the movies I could tell the whole story but I'm just keeping it really short here a casting agent said realistically enough he thought he could find parts for me as a villain he specifically said he thought I would be great as a corrupt lawyer he had a few other examples now I know I know why that guy came up and talked to me actually wants really different circumstance remember once a guy in the in the record industry in the music industry at a karaoke bar he actually asked me if I was if I was interested in getting involved with with singing or what-have-you that situation was not it's not that flattering uh for one thing that guy he was legit but he was he was very drunk he was I think both drunk and smoking marijuana that night but he was really impressed by my my performance on stage you thought I was really charismatic and he was he was hit arrested in meeting with me however that like I didn't go to our dish I didn't follow up with them they might figure it out really really soon that there's there's no talent behind the charisma I have no background it's secure or playing music um look the world of I think is full of people who have to sit there and say look you're good-looking enough to be a comedian but you're not good-looking enough to play a romantic role oh you're good-looking enough to be a villain but you're not good-looking enough to be a hero and maybe that's nasty and brutal and heartbreaking and maybe a lot of you people playing this game on YouTube are too sensitive you're delicate emotional butterflies whatever it is you can't take the heat well that's one of the most crucial differences between YouTube and real television isn't it none of you people had to go through an audition to get this right and now we're seeing all this fall out seeing people have a emotional meltdown because they feel they're not pretty enough or they're not smart enough or someone dared to say something so terrible them as to say that they're stupid or even not even that they are stupid but that one argument they made a stupid one video and they have an emotional meltdown and freak out and start lashing out and start doing unethical things like taking private emails and denouncing people and making pseudo psychological you know character assassination videos the whole point is to maintain your poise and dignity even when you face to face that stuff okay even when you get the bad news even when you fail the audition and I've got to say to you guys my mo and running this channel still hasn't changed I'm still making these videos so that one day my daughter can see them if you guys may think I'm a jerk but you got to be a jerk to some extent to survive in this world I got one piece of hate mail from a woman who I assume is vegan I don't know saying to me that she teaches her children never to use the word stupid that that's just such a terrible hurtful thing to ever say that another human being is stupid so her children are never allowed to use the word stupid how do you think that goes down for your kids on the schoolyard how do you think you're preparing your kids even to deal with the schoolyard fight let alone what I just dealt with in Chiangmai let alone what you're gonna tell within a in a jailhouse let alone what you're gonna deal with in in the workplace there's a lot of rough-and-tumble in this life let alone what you're going to deal with if you actually go to an audition whether it's as a musician or model or an actress okay I do not want my daughter to grow up without knowing how to swear without knowing how to curse without knowing how to fight I don't I don't want to grow up thinking her father is an angel I don't want to grow up thing your father's a hippie you know what there's a time for coarse language and there's a time for businesslike formal appropriate language there's a time to give academic lectures and as I've said recently I have never wanted my YouTube channel to resemble an academic lecture I want to give it to you raw I want to add whether it's my daughter watching this or - whether it's something else that I'm really going for here I'm not trying to reproduce what you get in a business meeting or an academic lecture no you shouldn't curse all the time you shouldn't be out of control you shouldn't be insulting to people all the time but there's a time and a place for those things - and that's all part of the rough-and-tumble of life so I'm sorry folks if you or personally shocked that I would use the term see - if referring to another person's body in this context where I'm talking about this fundamental problem that in veganism we have models who are not really models beauty icons who aren't really beautiful people who never get past you know ondition process we have filmmakers who weren't really making films activists formal items we have intellectuals who are not really intellectuals there's a lot of hollowness you know to what's going on in the in the movement the movement itself is not really a movement you know and even even this question of athletics we have people presenting themselves as athletes who weren't really athletes there was a guy talked to in Chiangmai he was one of the nice guys to be honest with you name up my arm is freezing because I just got back in the gym he was a nice guy and when I asked him what he was doing in Chiangmai I think he said he'd been there for six months he said training hey Oh who's wearing old Baker's oh well you know what are you training for working training here he's doing 15 kilometres a day that's that's not training long-distance cycling is a sport and there are people who will tell you you're an Olympic athlete that you are you have the material you have the DNA you have what it takes to be an Olympic athlete because you're doing 15 kilometres a day I'm the last person on this earth to glorify long-distance cycling but I do have experience with it you can meet and talk to real people you know you'd be doing hundreds and hundreds if you were training but honestly I just blanked on the guy I just didn't get it I didn't get that he was so brainwashed by the leadership of durianrider that he really thought he was a serious athlete doing a 15k run on a bike like it's like a 45-minute run or something iced when I was living in Vienna in the burning heat of the tropics I used to do 60 kilometers of thinking I used 260 kilometers for an errand 30k do the errand I have a cup of coffee back then I drank coffee now I don't 30 K back I didn't even think about that I didn't say I was in training I didn't think it was an athlete I don't have any delusions 60 km bike is nothing okay so this tremendous hollowness in terms of what's being broadcast about veganism today that is something in a really broad way I'd like to counter but also this timorousness this this lack of confidence you know come on I want you I want us to have what it takes to get up and go to that audition to do real things I want us to be a movement that consists of people who are capable of standing up at City Hall and giving a deposition of pursuing a real legal case hopefully not one that's about defamation or threats of violence but legal cases that are about water pollution and air pollution and animal rights and food safety standards and trying to change government policy and trying to get public education campaigns going I want to roll with a bunch of highly effective individuals who are really trying to save the planet we're really trying to bring about you know those those first painful steps towards veganism being a meaningful movement vegans being a meaningful community the vegans being a dynamic you know ethically motivated minority in the world in in the 21st century that's what I'm about and that's upsetting other videos can I have it this year no can I have it next year no can I have it within my lifetime maybe but we're not gonna get there by flattering each other we're not gonna get there by telling each other you're so beautiful when you're not you're so great when you're not you're such a great athlete when you're not oh you could be a model when you can't not everyone can be a model you know and even with even with language study all the time you have to tell people look you think you can do this in five years but you can't you know having realistic goals giving people realistic expectations down-to-earth feedback that's an issue even when we don't have the kind of you know pursuit of fame money sex etc on the Internet that of course is fueling a lot of what people pretend is activism okay that's what I got to say to you guys this afternoon in China and you know as I said before none of this stuff I'm not ashamed of this and not hiding this I hope my daughter one day has the patience to watch this kind of material for me and know what kind of guy I am because when you look at my resume what do you got veganism Buddhism Asian languages First Nations First Nations aka American Indians native people it'd be really easy to imagine the type of guy I am when you just look at the facts about me and think I'm some kind of soft hippie and I'm not that's not who I am I'm not the kind of person who would refuse to call you stupid in a private email straight to your face when I'm explaining to you that the reason why I don't want to talk to you anymore the reason why I'm giving up on you is that you're too stupid for me to spend the time doing it I'm that honest with people and I'm that real when I give them compliments as well and I'm the sort of person where would I get death threats I don't back down and I'm not scared and so on there's a hard edge to me that I don't exaggerate and I don't glorify but no I'm not a hippie I never have been a hippie I'm not a victim of a fad diet I'm not a victim of a weight loss craze I don't do yoga you know the a guy I am the reason why I want to be so real and raw with you people whether I'm talking about ethical issues political issues or otherwise is partly because my ultimate objective fear is just friendship I want to make friends with real people who I can get together with and do real things in this movement one day I hope it is a movement and I wouldn't want those friendships to be on a false basis either I wouldn't want you guys to think I'm somebody I'm not or I'm some other kind of guy and also yeah bottom line whatever 10 years from now my daughter can watch these videos and she herself might imagine there's that stereotype oh my dad's a hippie my dad's one of these guys who goes around talking about peace and love and non-violence I do I talk about non-violence all the time non-violence is a huge crucial issue for me but my vision of non-violence is not based on an unrealistic hippy detached view of reality it's based on a really deep appreciation for the history of political violence and it's also based on the desire for all of us fundamentally to do the best that we can that's actually a concept that's really gone out of fashion people like to talk about good and evil but you know doing the best that you can is a very humble way to approach the world because you can recognize that there are better ways to do things but sometimes you've got to look in the mirror and just say this is the best I can do so this is what I am gonna do so I close this by saying to all of you guys again ask yourselves if you really were trying to save the planet what could you do you're dead right there are all kinds of situations in which human beauty is irrelevant and in which having a c- body or an a-plus body is irrelevant selling diet books is not one of them selling permanent vacation and lifestyle activism is not one of them the whole fantasy of running away and becoming an Instagram model it's not one of them matters and of course I would love to see more of our time and attention and effort going into those types of activism where the fat and ugly people can rule the world and wear it nothing could matter less than how fat or how ugly you are